Ray Evans writes a review below of Robert Manne’s essay in The Monthly entitled A Dark Victory: How vested interests defeated climate science. (Forgive me Ray for slipping in one or two thoughts of my own below). Ray Evans is the secretary of The Lavoisier Group one of the first original skeptical groups in Australia (I’ve put a few notes on that at the base of the article). It was Graham Readfearns review (ABC Drum) that apparently brought the Manne article to Ray’s attention.Dear All,Readfearn’s review was a lamentation of defeat and disappointment. So I immediately bought a copy of The...

I decided to do myself something that so far NOAA has refused to do: give a CONUS average temperature for the United States from the new ‘state of the art’ United States Climate Reference Network (USCRN). After spending millions of dollars to put in this new network from 2002 to 2008, they are still giving us data from the old one when they report a U.S. national average temperature. As readers may recall, I have demonstrated that old COOP/USHCN network used to monitor U.S. climate is a mishmash of urban, semi-urban, rural, airport and non-airport stations, some of which are...

Uh oh.Steve McIntyre has written an eviscerating essay about a secret letter circulated by the IPCC to UEA/CRU, which they are refusing to divulge, because: there would be an adverse effect on international relations between IPCC WG1 and academic institutions within the United Kingdom because it would force is to reconsider our working arrangements with those experts who have been selected for an active role in WG1 AR5 from your institution and others in the UK”. McIntyre writes: On Feb 26, 2010, as part of their first response to Climategate, Thomas Stocker, a Climategate correspondent of Phil Jones and by...

Operation Cabin Q&As (from the Norfolk Police here PDF) The following questions and answers are an abridged version of Norfolk Constabulary’s Operation Cabin media briefing held on Thursday 19 July 2012.How do you know it was an external hack?In outline terms, we know it came via the internet from a number of different IP addresses, in various countries, which may have been proxy servers. The attack was, first of all, into the web server (CRUweb8) in the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the UEA. From there, a link was established to a CRU back-up server (CRUback3).It’s fair to say, the...

Watts Up With That? ^ | July 7, 2012 | Christopher C. Horner -- First published in the Washington Examiner,

The collusion of the climate crowd Posted on July 7, 2012 by Anthony Watts Union of Concerned Scientists (Photo credit: Wikipedia) By Christopher C. HornerFirst published in the Washington Examiner, reposted here with permissionNot long ago, the American Tradition Institute initiated a transparency campaign using federal and state freedom of information laws to learn more about how taxpayer-funded academics use their positions to advance a particular agenda. On its face, this should have been welcomed by the Left, which often lays claim to the “transparency” mantle. It is instead causing great angst.Our project would compile the context to the “Climategate” scandal,...

Full Title:******************************************************************** Mann at Orange County Water Conference – emotional presentation, polar bears threatened, still thinks snows of Kilimanjaro are receding due to ‘climate change’****************************************************************Readers may recall: The question put to Dr. Mann at Disneyland today where WUWT regular Roger Sowell was one of the rare skeptics that got to ask Dr. Mann a question.The video is now online of the event.Sowell’s question starts at around 59:35 minutes, Mann’s answer ends about 1:03:10 UPDATE:Dr. Mann’s slide presentation is available at this link. Note the polar bear on the ice floe.http://www.ocwatersummit.com/ backup link: MichaelMann_OCWS (PDF 24mb)I find it fascinating that Mann...

EurActiv ^ | 18 June 2012 | Jonathan Watts for The Guardian, part of the Guardian Environment Network

The Rio+20 Earth summit must take decisive action on population and consumption regardless of political taboos or it will struggle to tackle the alarming decline of the global environment, the world's leading scientific academies have warned. Rich countries need to reduce or radically transform unsustainable lifestyles, while greater efforts should be made to provide contraception to those who want it in the developing world, the coalition of 105 institutions, including the Royal Society in Britain, urged in a joint report released on 14 June. It's a wake-up call for negotiators meeting in Rio for the UN conference on sustainable development....

I wrote yesterday about the unprecedented way the UN was locking out anyone at Rio that was not part of an official government delegation. More than ever before, the UN is not even pretending to to serve the people of the world. Even the facade is gone. The rules have changed since Monckton, Watts Up and the internet spoiled the party at Durban. All the heroic NGO’s have been blocked from the negotiations (as well as those evil free market libertarians). They are only there for the theatrics. The real action goes on behind closed doors, in what Monckton calls...

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Anthony Watts Source: US Department of EnergyIf the looming spectre of rising electricity prices due to CARB’s upcoming “cap and trade” isn’t enough, now the Department of Water resources has opted to be less efficient by giving low cost electricity the boot. Somebody else will buy it, so there’s no net savings other than banking “feel good” capital.From the green section of the Chico News and Review:Coal-fired plant gets the bootDepartment of Water Resources will not renew lease with Nevada plantThis article was published on 06.21.12. California’s Department of Water Resources will not renew...

This is a follow up posting to Younger Dryas -The Rest of the Story!Guest post by Don J. Easterbrook Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University.The Younger Dryas was a period of rapid cooling in the late Pleistocene 12,800 to 11,500 calendar years ago. It followed closely on the heels of a dramatically abrupt warming that brought the last Ice Age to a close (17,500 calendar years ago), lasted for about 1,300 years, then ended as abruptly as it started. The cause of these remarkably sudden climate changes has puzzled geologists and climatologists for decades and despite much effort to find...

Ah, such a tease! I canâ€™t say I have much faith that, the way things stand right now, this bill will make it through untouched, but itâ€™s beautiful to think about nonetheless.A House committee has managed to advance a 2013 spending bill that would impose deep cuts and restrictions on the Environmental Protection Agency. The bill cuts EPA by $1.4 billion, about 17 percent, compared to current funding. The GOP points out that this brings the EPA below fiscal 1998 funding.House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), who hails from coal country, said he is especially proud of the measure,...

Jeff Masters and I recently received an interesting email from Ken Towe who has been researching the NCDC historical temperature database and came across what appeared to be some startling inconsistencies. Namely that the average state temperature records used in the current trends analysis by the NCDC (National Climate Data Center) do not reflect the actual published records of such as they appeared in the Monthly Weather Reviews and Climatological Data Summaries of years past. Here is why. ------------------------------------------- Yet as we have seen time and time again, with the exception of a -0.05°C cooling applied for UHI (which is...

AP Photo Mitt Romney arrived at the shuttered headquarters of Solyndra Inc. this morning, a surprise visit that was shrouded in secrecy and part of the presumptive GOP presidential candidateâ€™s attack on President Obamaâ€™s record on jobs creation.â€śTwo years ago President Obama was here to tout this building and this business as a symbol of the success of his stimulus,â€ť said Romney, stepping off a bus and onto the public sidewalk in front of the Solyndra buildings just outside Silicon Valley. â€śWell you can see that itâ€™s a symbol of something very different today.â€ť Read More About Solyndra from ABCâ€™s...

Posted on May 26, 2012 by Anthony Watts Al Gore, is his usual incompetent persona, is bloviating weapons grade nonsense again.A few prior examples: On TV, EarthÂ’s core is millions of degrees, in AIT, snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro will gone due to global warming, except the snows are growing, and GoreÂ’s 24Â hours of Climate Reality Â“high school scienceÂ” that is so solid it has to be faked in post production.GoreÂ’s got a new schtick, he is now complaining about Â“dirty energyÂ” making Â“dirty weatherÂ”.From the Daily Caller thereÂ’s this: Former Vice President Al Gore showed that he isnÂ’t giving...

This post will be a sticky top post for a day or two, new stories will appear below this one.Climategate ContinuesBy Andrew Montford & Harold AmblerMay 24, 2012 4:00 A.M. in the National Review – reposted here with permissionClimategate, the 2009 exposure of misconduct at the University of East Anglia, was a terrible blow to the reputation of climatology, and indeed to that of British and American science. Although that story hasn’t been in the news in recent months, new evidence of similar scientific wrongdoing continues to emerge, with a new scandal hitting the climate blogosphere just a few days...

Many thanks for the invitation and for giving me the opportunity to address this distinguished audience. I am not for the first time in Chicago. It is also not for the first time that I am attending a conference organized by the Heartland Institute. But it is for the first time I am with Heartland here in Chicago.Some of you know that I came to Chicago for the NATO summit. Yesterday and today I was supposed to speak about what to do in Afghanistan, how to keep NATO going in an era of overall indebtedness and budgetary cuts, and about...

This will be a top sticky post for a day or two, new stories will appear below this one. At the Heartland Conference in Chicago this morning, four of the forty-nine signers of the March letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (discussed at WUWT here, here, and here) appeared to discuss their reasons for signing that letter and to announce a second letter responding to NASAÂ’s response.The text of that letter is reproduced below: May 11, 2012The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr. â€¨NASA AdministratorNASA HeadquartersWashington, D.C. 20546-0001Dear Charlie: In our letter of March 28, 2012, we, the undersigned, respectfully requested that...

Extremist green campaigning group WWF - endorsed by no less a body than the European Space Agency - has stated that economic growth should be abandoned, that citizens of the world's wealthy nations should prepare for poverty and that all the human race's energy should be produced as renewable electricity within 38 years from now. Most astonishingly of all, the green hardliners demand that the enormous numbers of wind farms, tidal barriers and solar powerplants required under their plans should somehow be built while at the same time severely rationing supplies of concrete, steel, copper and glass. The WWF presents...

A new paper published May 15th in the the journal The Cryosphere utilizes 12 years worth of RADARSAT data to determine the rate at which some well known ice shelves in Antarctica have been moving and changing, and the answer is: “not much”. In fact it appears there has been a slowing down. First a map of Antarctica and the most worrisome Ross Ice Shelf (marked by the red x) is in order: If you follow the alarmosphere and MSM related to the Ross Ice Shelf and others, you get these kinds of stories: West Antarctic ice sheet collapse even...